https://www.inquisitr.com/5163540/jacob ... ti-arrest/(CNN)Attorney Michael Avenatti has been placed under arrest on suspicion of felony domestic violence and was booked early Wednesday evening.
Los Angeles Police Department officer Jeff Lee said the domestic violence report was taken on Tuesday in West Los Angeles and the arrest was made Wednesday.
"We can confirm that today LAPD Detectives arrested Michael Avenatti on suspicion of domestic violence. This is an ongoing investigation and we will provide more details as they become available," the LAPD Twitter account posted Wednesday.
In a statement, Avenatti called the allegations "completely bogus."
"I wish to thank the hard working men and woman of the LAPD for their professionalism they were only doing their jobs in light of the completely bogus allegations against me," he said. "I have never been physically abusive in my life nor was I last night. Any accusations to the contrary are fabricated and meant to do harm to my reputation. I look forward to being fully exonerated."
Avenatti posted $50,000 bail and left police custody Wednesday evening. He told reporters waiting outside the station, "I have never struck a woman. I never will strike a woman."
"I am confident I will be fully exonerated," he added.
The alleged domestic assault incident was first reported by TMZ.
Avenatti emerged this year as a regular antagonist of President Donald Trump, beginning with his legal representation of Stormy Daniels and his frequent media appearances. For months, he has publicly flirted with a potential bid for the Democratic presidential nomination to challenge Trump in 2020.
The alleged domestic violence incident could dash Avenatti's prospects as a potential insurgent Democratic candidate and clash with the image he has presented of himself as an advocate for women, including Daniels in her clash with Trump and an accuser against recently confirmed Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
The Vermont Democratic Party canceled Avenatti's appearances for Friday and Saturday following his arrest, and it will refund all ticket sales, said Christopher Di Mezzo, the party's communications director.
The decision to cancel the events was made "almost immediately after the news broke," he said.
The allegation would also mark another legal issue for the California attorney, whose firm settled a case with the IRS in July and was ordered last month to pay a multimillion-dollar judgment over debt to a former law partner.
Following his representation of Julie Swetnick for her allegations against Kavanaugh, Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley said in October that he was referring Avenatti and Swetnick to the Justice Department. Avenatti said at the time that the referral was "baseless." Several Democrats said in the wake of Kavanaugh's confirmation that Avenatti and Swetnick's involvement damaged their efforts to prevent Kavanaugh's confirmation -- a charge Avenatti denied.
This is a breaking story and will be updated.
I could really believe either here. Avenatti strikes me as an arrogant and ambitious man who is using his clients to try to jumpstart a bid for the Presidency (an office he is wholly unqualified to hold), and there are certainly reasons to question his integrity. I could very easily see him in the role of faux defender of women who's actually an abuser, and plays "white knight" for personal benefit.Jacob Wohl, the 20-year-old Donald Trump mega-fan and conspiracy theorist who on November 2 attempted to stage a hoax accusing Russia Investigation Special Counsel Robert Mueller of sexual assault, as NBC News reported, appeared on Wednesday to claim credit for the arrest of Michael Avenatti.
Avenatti, who skyrocketed to fame earlier this year as the media-friendly lawyer for adult video star Stormy Daniels in her lawsuit against Donald Trump, was arrested by Los Angeles detectives on Wednesday on suspicion of domestic violence, the LAPD confirmed on its Twitter account.
The news of Avenatti’s arrest, as the Inquisitr reported, first appeared on the celebrity gossip site TMZ — which initially said that the alleged victim was Avenatti’s estranged wife, Lisa Storie.
But after Storie issued a statement through her lawyer, posted on Twitter by CNN correspondent MJ Lee, denying that she was involved in any such incident, TMZ updated its own story.
“We were initially told by our sources the alleged victim was Avenatti’s estranged wife,” TMZ wrote in the update. “We now know it was not. The incident involved a different woman.” The site also reported that Avenatti would be released on $50,000 bail, with an “emergency protective order” prohibiting him from contact with the still-unidentified alleged victim.
But soon after the arrest was made public, a supposed private investigation firm — Surefire Intelligence — directly connected to Wohl and his attempt to frame Mueller, posted a cryptic message to its own Twitter feed. The post linked to a news report of Avenatti’s arrest, and contained the comment, “Surefire Intelligence strikes again.”
Wohl himself retweeted the Surefire Intelligence tweet. While Wohl has denied that he is connected to Surefire Intelligence, the supposed company “is linked to Wohl in numerous ways, including domain records and a company phone that redirects to a number registered to Wohl’s mother,” according to NBC News.
It was Surefire Intelligence that sent emails to several women offering them sizable cash payments if they would publicly and falsely accuse Mueller of sexual assault, according to the Above The Law legal blog.
Though he retweeted the “Surefire Intelligence strikes again” tweet, Wohl later posted a Twitter message of his own, appearing to take a high road with regard to the Avenatti arrest.
“Michael Avenatti is innocent until proven guilty. Even though I disagree with him, I grant the presumption of innocence that he refused to grant to Justice Kavanaugh,” Wohl wrote, referring to allegations by Avenatti’s client Julie Swetnick that then-Supreme Court Nominee Brett Kavanaugh had participated in parties where women were drugged and gang-raped, as the Inquisitr has reported.
Following his release on bail, Avenatti denied the domestic violence allegations, calling them “completely bogus,” MediaIte reported.
“I have never struck a woman,” Avenatti said in his public statement. “I never will strike a woman. I have been an advocate for women’s rights my entire career and I’m going to continue to be an advocate. I am not going to be intimidated from stopping what I am doing. I am a father to two beautiful, smart daughters. I would never disrespect them by touching a woman inappropriately or striking a woman.”
CNN's Bonney Kapp contributed to this report.
That said, I can also see Republicans trying to frame him, because Republicans have made it clear that they will use politically-motivated abuse charges to try to simultaneously silence dissenters and discredit feminism. I expect that we'll conveniently see a lot of Democratic politicians and activists accused of abusing women in the next year or two.